Rick Santorum Unclear On Medical Marijuana Laws

At a campaign stop in Concord, N.H. on Thursday, GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum spent more than an hour sparring with college students over everything from gay rights to pot, though he struggled to explain why he won't support states' rights to allow medical marijuana.

When questioned by a student wondering why conservatives tend to favor states' rights except in the case of medical marijuana, Santorum confessed that he does not know his medical cannabis laws.

Without an informed opinion about policy, Santorum defended his argument using personal experience, according to Talking Points Memo. "I went to college too," he said during the College Convention 2012 forum, organized by New England College.

The response did not go over well, eliciting boos from the audience, and that's not a surprise.

Fifty percent of Americans favor legalizing marijuana, according to a recent Gallup poll, with support for legalization among Americans under the age of 30 as high as 62 percent. Gallup has found that Americans are especially likely to favor legalizing marijuana for medicinal purposes, and 70 percent favor making it legal for doctors to prescribe marijuana to reduce pain and suffering, according to a survey last year.

HuffPost has compiled a slideshow highlighting GOP candidates' positions on the issue. Most have more to say than Santorum.

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Republican Candidates On Marijuana(NO VOTING)

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Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) has called for an end to the war on drugs, insisting that marijuana laws should be set not by the federal government but by the states. In June, he teamed up with Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) to introduce legislation removing marijuana from the list of federally regulated substances. Though essentially dead upon arrival, the bill helps to illuminate Paul's views.

Long-shot GOP presidential candidate Gary Johnson has argued repeatedly for legalizing marijuana and says that he would consider issuing a full presidential pardon for anyone serving a prison sentence for a nonviolent marijuana crime.
The former New Mexico governor has been open with the media about his own experiences smoking pot. Johnson told The 420 Times that "marijuana really helped [him] deal" with the pain after a paragliding accident in 2005, and in an interview with The New Republic he joked, "I never exhaled."
He also maintains that his position is viable politically. "Pot smokers may be the largest untapped voting bloc in the country," he said in an interview with Outside Magazine. "A hundred million Americans have smoked marijuana. You think they want to be considered criminals?"

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney has stated his opposition to medical cannabis. Asked about the issue during the 2008 presidential campaign, he replied, "I don't want marijuana to be used in our country. I'm not going to legalize marijuana."

In his book, "Fed Up," Texas Gov. Rick Perry wrote that medical marijuana laws should be decided at the state level.
In September, Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post interviewed Perry's spokesman on the subject. The spokesman said, "The Governor does not support legalizing any drug. The Governor supports federal drug laws where appropriate. And while the Governor is personally opposed to legalizing the use of medical marijuana, if states want to allow doctor prescribed medical marijuana, it seems to him that under the 10th amendment, they have the right to do so."

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has been outspoken in his opposition to legalizing marijuana. He sponsored the Drug Importer Death Penalty Act of 1996, under which importing more than two ounces of certain illegal substances into the country can be punishable by life imprisonment or death.

Former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) has admitted to using marijuana in college, but now supports harsher penalties for a host of drug-related crimes.
Politicians who have stumbled personally, he argues, are still able to make values-based arguments. "I don't think that's hypocritical," Santorum said in an interview with the National Review.